Folding Forum

Subject: FAH Business Card Design (Update)

After giving this FAH business card idea even more thought, (and taking into consideration numerous factors such as “legal complications” involving the use of graphics), I have revised and edited the design as follows.

<begin card design>

Front of Card:

The Wikipedia “in the public domain” protein folding graphic:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Protein_folding.png

will appear (centered) at the top of the card. There will be one blank line below the graphic followed by the following (brief) block of text.

Stanford Medical School’s “Folding@Home” distributed computing project seeks to study and better understand protein folding dynamics and computational molecular biology to aid in the rational design of new drugs and effective treatments in the fight against debilitating diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s disease, influenza, the HIV virus, and many forms of cancer. The Folding@Home project needs you (and your home computer) to join in the fight against these diseases.

Insert one blank line followed by these web site URLs:

http://icrontic.com/files/team93/videos/foldflash2.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folding@home
http://www.stanford.edu/group/pandegrou ... ingFAQ.pdf

Back of Card:

After giving this more thought, I’m coming to the conclusion that the best option for the back of the card is to leave it blank. The back of the card is best left “clean” and available for jotting down notes or information – especially if a prospective donor has questions. If the front of the card does its job, there’s really no need to load up the back of the card.

<end card design>

This design is “busy” (as in quite a bit of information for a smallish card) but I’m hopeful the printer can work with me to incorporate the graphic (and all of the other information including the URLs) onto a post-card-sized card. (If necessary, I suppose the card can be expanded to a size slightly larger than a post card.)

This card will be most effective if you present it to a prospective donor in the course of a casual conversation where you emphasize your own involvement in the FAH project.

This is the (revised) design to this point. Comments welcome.

There is no such thing as "Stanford Medical School". "Stanford University" should suffice.

Dr. Pande is a Professor, Natural Sciences, and as such is responsible for projects and classes in Chemistry, Physics, Structural Biology, Computer Science, etc. including an appointment to the Stanford's School of Medicine. http://med.stanford.edu/ When it comes down to defining FAH, it's correct to equate FAH with Dr. Pande and his team, and it's not really important which parts of Stanford University he's associated with.

I agree: "Stanford University" should suffice.

Well, officially it is the Stanford School of Medicine, that is listed as one of the supporting groups for the F@H project. However, since the project is not just at Stanford these days, perhaps identifying that it is done by the Pande Group associated with Stanford University and other research labs would be sufficient.

OK, I'm going with "Stanford University's Folding@Home distributed computing project ..." and leaving out the reference to the medical school.

This may not be totally correct, but it's awkward (and verbose) starting off the paragraph with "Stanford University's School of Medicine Folding@Home distributed computing project ..." That initial sentence is already long enough and I have limited "real estate" to work with. I spent time today looking at cards of various sizes with my mother. It looks like I'm going to have to go with a card that is one-third to one-half larger than a standard post card in order to get all this information onto the card. I will be visiting a local printer tomorrow to review the design, determine the optimal card size (i.e. "form factor"?) and try to get an estimate. My feeling right now is that the graphic will compel a larger card size. I hope the printer will have a good on-staff graphic design artist who will have some good ideas.

I have (intentionally) tried to make this card neutral as far as personally identifiable information is concerned. (Meaning this card is not about "Alan". If necessary, you can jot down that kind of information on the back of the card.) This is important since I'm hoping many of you can use this same design for distribution to potential folders within your own circle of friends. I intend to have 1,000 of these cards printed (initially) and distributed here in my area. If I can use these cards to bring 1,000 new folders into the FAH community, that will be great, but my real goal is to get ten times that number over a period of one year. I'll be meeting with caregiver support groups and encouraging people within those groups to get their own batch of cards printed and distribute those to their own friends and associates. I'm hoping this snowballs and the cards turn out to be a good investment.

If many of us have these cards printed and start distributing them, Dr. Pande and his team will have those 100,000 additional CPUs/GPUs they're hoping for. (We'll have bruce working some overtime ...)

I need you to delay ordering these cards. There are some things happening in the near future which will change part of what you're planning to say. I'm not allowed to explain why or to talk about any of the details.

If you do decide to proceed anyway, don't order more cards than you will use in about a month.

Mentioning diabetes in the disease list might also be a good idea. This disease is running rampant in many areas of the world and most people can immediately identify with it since they or someone they know probably has been affected by it.